Mozilla is taking Firefox browser to the next level with Fathom JavaScript framework. The framework is helping browser maker to extract the meaning out of webpages.
Fathom is known as a mini-language for writing semantic extractors. Justifying the name, the Fathom framework is used for picking out page descriptions, images and other items. The JavaScript framework is helping Firefox to understand the content and structure of a webpage. It is being used in the Activity Stream traffic tracker of Firefox.
Fathom can be implemented in a browser, extensions and even server-side software. It is a data-flow language like Prolog.
Mozilla’s developers have designed Fathom to calculate DOM nodes based on user-specified conditions, annotations and a system of types. This process helps the framework to extract meaning from parts like address forms, previous/next buttons and textual content found on the website.
Smart enough even at early stage
According to Mozilla’s Senior Staff Software Architect Erik Rose, the framework is still in the early stage of development. It, nevertheless, enables the browser to identify meaningful parts on a page and show the summary.
Rule sets in Fathom are JavaScript function calls that make annotations in syntax tree version. These rule sets are capable of giving automatic tuning of score constants. Furthermore, you can expect the future releases to learn and give out an automatic generation of rules itself.
